Sentiments On Common Sense

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I don’t often get a chance to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger but I will today. This from an edweek.org article:

“How can kids compete in the global economy when the information the schools feed them is stale and is outdated and is old?

Then, while minding my own business at home on a lovely Saturday in Shanghai, one of the teachers at our school sent me this link to an article stating that 1:1 programs are only as good as their teachers. The article titled, “One to One computing programs only as effective as their teacher” by Meris Stansbury states that:

Not surprisingly, the researchers say the most important factor of all is the teaching practices of instructors—suggesting school laptop programs are only as effective as the teachers who apply them.

Let’s apply some common sense here:

1.  Students need up to date resources.  Not “stale” or “outdated” ones.
2.  Students need effective teachers with effective teaching practices.

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Again, not surprisingly The authors of the Texas study conclude:

“Respondents at higher implementing schools reported that committed leaders, thorough planning, teacher buy-in, preliminary professional development for teachers, and a commitment to the transformation of student learning were keys to their successful implementation” of the state’s Technology Immersion Project.

Let’s add another layer of common sense:

1.  Students need up to date resources.  Not “stale” or “outdated” ones.
2.  Students need effective teachers with effective teaching practices.
3. COMMITTED LEADERS!

Another educator listed in the same article states:

“In our 1-to-1 program … we put a big emphasis on project-based learning; otherwise, the laptop is no more than an expensive notepad. … Research needs to show the effects of this different style of teaching in terms of student engagement, motivation, and so-called 21st-century skills. The subject matters themselves don’t have as much room for improvement,”

Ok…once again,some common sense here:

1.  Students need up to date resources.  Not “stale” or “outdated” ones.
2.  Students need effective teachers with effective teaching practices.
3. COMMITTED LEADERS!
4.  STUDENT CENTERED learning approaches.

Then they state in the article:

Given the importance of teachers in the success of school laptop initiatives, it’s no surprise that “teacher preparation through [ongoing professional development] was important for successful implementation,” write Bebell and O’Dwyer. “As 1-to-1 programs become more popular, the quality and depth of preparation that teachers receive for implementation will become a central predictor of program success.”

They go on to say:

“Buying laptops is the easiest part of the process, but too often school districts neglect such fundamental items as providing initial and ongoing professional development for the teachers and providing sufficient tech support,” Thompson said. “Taking a true TCO [total cost of ownership] approach would avoid many of the mistakes, as schools often do not have a good grasp of the real costs of starting and continuing a 1-to-1 program. And part of the TCO approach should be setting measurable program objectives and then doing formative and summative program evaluations, whose results are made known to everyone to provide a feedback loop in the continuous planning and re-planning that characterizes successful programs.”

I probably will have to stop here but… some more common sense:

1.  Students need up to date resources.  Not “stale” or “outdated” ones.
2.  Students need effective teachers with effective teaching practices.
3. COMMITTED LEADERS!
4.  STUDENT CENTERED learning approaches.
5. ONGOING Professional Development!

Schools moving to a 1:1 program needs to read this article. It is a great summary of issues. I believe I have only scratched the surface.

In closing, I draw your attention to a quote from Tammy Stephens, CEO of the Stephens Group LLC, a private investment firm, is working on a dissertation that focuses on the evolution of transformational communication patterns in 1-to-1 computing environments. She has been evaluating a 1-to-1 program in the Milwaukee Public Schools for the past three years.

According to Stephens, changing teaching practices to incorporate 21st-century skills with laptops “is definitely an evolution, and it takes time for teacher practices to evolve.”

Technorati Tags: 1:1, PD, Professional Development, resources, teachers, k-12, leadership, eschoolnews,

This entry has been cross posted to LeaderTalk.

As I work this academic year in rolling out a 1:1 program, I have thought long and hard about the next steps after the initial “out of the box” experience has worn off and the machines find their place in the daily lives of the students and their teachers.  Now in month 6 of the implementation, I am faced with some decision making about the next steps to drive home the initial success of our program.  Success, in this case, is a feel of “normalcy” around the school with technology.  The networks is working well. Service centers are up and running.  Teachers expect things to work most of the time and indeed, I think they do.  They are also meeting the daily challenge of using the machines in activities and units daily.  Technology standards are being met more readily.  Students are expecting to use their machines for projects, research, lessons in all subject areas.  Again… the normalcy of the implementation is beginning to set in.

Most recently though I  have struggled just a bit with the integration of the walk through protocols we have established at our school and the clear, consistent identification of quality technology use by teachers and students.  I believe that many administrators and supervisors are still struggling with clarity around the NETS-S and NETS-T and the identification of specific examples where and when the standards are being implemented in classrooms.  To the neophyte technology user, any technology use must be good technology use. We all know this is wrong!

I will be rolling out for my leadership team this next week the ISTE Classroom Observation Tool (ICOT). We will have them share specific examples of the “look-for” clues are to determine appropriate, strong and progressive use of technology in our classrooms.  We will do side-by-side walkthroughs to develop our common understandings around the use of this very useful framework.  It should be noted that the ICOT tool online is currently out of date as ISTE has not updated it for the updated NETS-T but that is an easy trade off for the other parts of the tool, and I (heaven forbid) even PRINTED it out for them to look at, pull apart and examine the sheer genius that is this observation tool.

The tool asks the observer to evaluate:

• the physical layout of the room
• student groupings
• the role the teacher is playing
• learning activities that are being used
• the essentiality of technology to the activity or lesson
• the specific technology tools being used by the teacher
• the specific technology tools being used by the students
• The NETS-Teachers being addressed (see attached)
• Total time for technology use during the walkthrough and…

A Three Minute Chart is provided to track technology:

• Use by Students (For learning or not?)
• Use by Teacher (for learning or not?)

I believe this framework has tremendous potential to help educational leaders as we learn to train our eye to the key components of technology use in our classrooms and make it possible for us to more effectively lead technology integration at our school.  In the course of classroom observations school leaders make hundreds, if not thousands of professional judgments every week.  This tool guides the user to structure those judgments more precisely and I also believe that over time the administrators will be able to use this information to make technology expectations more ubiquitous in our organization and judgments based on data gathered over time.

The fact is that we are at the point next academic year where the communication of expectations for teachers in the use of technology is going to be more important that the actual implementation and training of the use of technology tools.  It is obvious that we have got to ramp up our expectations (with continued, persistent, consistent and insistent professional development support) or we will plateau and that could sound the death knell for our 1:1 program.  Value added results are expected and if we don’t deliver the program is done.

As part of the increase in expectations, I am hoping that next year we can do an all out ICOT observation month to gather school wide data for technology use in our classrooms.  This will indeed bring forward the power of the NETS-A, and show the school the importance of implementation attention for systematic improvement, visionary leadership and a focus on professional practice.

Technorati Tags: tech plan, implementation, PD, proD, professional development, 1:1, technology

This entry has been cross posted to www.leadertalk.org

I just returned from a trip to the U.S. to hire some teachers for my school.  Those trips are grueling, intense and a chance to examine my personal educational beliefs at a core level.

We move out on these trips with great purpose.

We work in teams.

We talk. We collaborate. We commiserate. We come home exhausted.

We interview 15-18 teachers a day and make some very basic decisions (to offer a contract or say “no thank you”) which are VERY important decisions about who will be the teachers in some of our classrooms this next academic year.

Before we went out on our recruiting trips this year, I had our administrative team review an article from Independent School Management titled “Why the Worst (and Best) Teachers Matter”.  Unfortunately it is a copyrighted article not available on the web unless you are member of ISM, but I will quote from the article which focuses the reader on the aphorism that “a rising tide lifts all boats” is not necessarily true day in and day out in the classrooms.  The author notes that “bad” teachers also have an effect on the good teachers in the schools in which we work.  Evidence points to the fact that..

Relationships among people in an organization matter a great deal.

Simply put, students get higher marks when both their teacher and their teacher’s peers are above average; when teachers peers are lower in ability and effectiveness, students achievement levels reflect that.

Technically speaking….

…the study notes that “replacing one peer (teacher) wiht another has one standard deviation higher value-added will increase her students tests scores by 0.86 percent of a standard deviation.” That improvement is noted for reading; for mathematics improvement “is associated with a 3.98% of a standard deviation increase in math test scores.”

Noteworthy?  I think so!  In fact as I read the article, and did as the author suggested and examine this trend in it’s entirety, I believe it confirms just what I believed for some time.  Teachers, like students, benefit from direct learning from their peers, and that learning and professional improvement result from exposure to better peers.  It is probably a “no-duh!” for many administrators out there when I state that it really has nothing to do with the school, and the organization and more about the quality of the teachers in the classrooms.  Great schools, as common sense would tell you, have bad teachers and bad, or poor performing schools have some good teachers.  In the Atlantic Monthly article “What Makes are Great Teacher?” author Amanda Ripley notes in her article detailing the “New Teacher Project” that,

For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy than science, a mix of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of inspiration and dedication.

She goes on to share that…

But we have never identified excellent teachers in any reliable, objective way. Instead, we tend to ascribe their gifts to some mystical quality that we can recognize and revere—but not replicate. The great teacher serves as a hero but never, ironically, as a lesson.

Noting that…

Parents have always worried about where to send their children to school; but the school, statistically speaking, does not matter as much as which adult stands in front of their children. Teacher quality tends to vary more within schools—even supposedly good schools—than among schools.

So, what should we be looking for out there?  What kinds of traits do we look for, and HOW does my team of administrators gleen realization of these traits from brief 15-30 minute interviews. My take as always been to find learners, not learned teachers.  I have always looked for teachers who have an innate joy and love of life.  I look for teachers who have demonstrated leadership and goal aquisition in the past.  I look for teachers who have perserverved, not through hardship, but toward a single-minded high standard for the student learning experience.  My common sense is once again confirmed as noted by Ripley when she quotes the Journal of Positive Psychology.

In a study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology in November 2009, they evaluated 390 Teach for America instructors before and after a year of teaching. Those who initially scored high for “grit”—defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals, and measured using a short multiple-choice test—were 31 percent more likely than their less gritty peers to spur academic growth in their students. Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer. (Grit also predicts retention of cadets at West Point, Duckworth has found.)

Interestingly this hit a nerve with me.  It makes a lot of common sense.

Grit.  Stamina. A learner. Flexible. Adaptable. Grit.

Technorati Tags: recruiting, hiring, great teachers, bad teachers, supervision and evaluation, Atlantic Monthly, What Makes a Great Teacher?

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/68898571@N00/3562074395

In my last post, I noted that I’d been saving this bookmark in my computer for quite a while.  Sean Nash from the blog nashworld wrote in July about the “Four Pillars of Technology Integration.” I wrote last week about our experiences with our Challenge Based Learning workshops that we were hosting in the month of September.  Today, I would like to explore the ideas that Sean has written about focusing on “Unfiltered, Ubiquitous Access”.

Sean spends a lot of time and lines writing about the requirements of the law in his state. The US has a lot of people telling each other what kids should and could see in their school networks, all the while the little darlings are going home and REALLY wanting to explore those sites because there are adults who have told them NOT to go there. Sigh… same story now as it was in the old days when boys would cruise the magazine racks for the occasional adult reading material so easily in their reach and so easily accessible.  Same holds true today.  But… that is not what I want to reflect on here.   Instead I would like to write about Sean’s comments around the ubiquity of the tools that may or may not be blocked in his district. The fact is that we all have a goal in our technology implementations that Sean describes so well.  He states:

Soon after access is all around you, it doesn’t even feel like “technology,” it just feels like the way things are done.  This is a good thing, for when technology becomes invisible, we can finally focus on the value added from new uses of these tools.  The world is moving quickly toward wireless access in all corners.

In my schools, we are now operating on a new wireless network and finding that it has freed us up in so many new ways.  Truthfully, the power of this tool alone is worth the price of educational admission at most schools, where roaming bands of learners find that access is found in any corner of the campus. We worked to ensure that the access is fully realized in the fields, cafeterias, student lounges and playgrounds with the realization that we need to have access where the students are located and stop worrying so much about locating the students in a lab or classroom.  By developing that freedom of space, you also free up the time of your community to learn and grow in any space and at any time.

Ultimately though it does come down to getting the machines in the hands of the students.  Sean writes:

If your school isn’t at a 1:1 ratio of students to laptop computers… and the students don’t take them home with them night by night, all year long… then you don’t yet have an ideal learning environment for 2009 in my opinion.

If you are a regular reader of my blog then you know how I feel.  Frankly speaking, I believe I have staked a lot of my career on the belief that a learner needs the tools of thought, voice, action and deed.  For a construction worker a shovel may be the tool of his trade, or another it may be a ruler, level or even his voice. For a learner, the tool of information access, information creation and information processing is currently a laptop computer. I cannot even imagine getting my work done without it.  I also have to ask how a student can get through school without the tool that virtually every adult uses day in and day out. Computers, whether on a desk or in a bag, are here to stay and getting more and more accessible each and every day.

In our CBL workshops we spend some time talking about the effects that the computers in each student’s hands will have on the working relationship that teachers and students develop over time.  The fact is that by giving students access like a laptop will certain democratize and “flatten” the social structure of a classroom. All of a sudden the teacher is not the ONLY resource to student for knowledge and in fact, the knowledge held in the head of an instructor may be “dated” or even wrong.  This, of course, moves all conversations to classroom management.  Frankly speaking I have been struggling finding resources for teachers on classroom management that will make them feel empowered and more comfortable.  Some of the more sage instructors will tell me (and their colleagues) that “good classroom management is good classroom management, laptops or not”. 
While I want to believe that is mostly true, I do think there will be some “figuring out” how to make it all work.  Thanks to my friend Blair Peterson, I was sent to the Friday Institute for Educational Innovations which is coordinating a study of 1:1 classrooms in North Carolina.  I found some great resources there and a great NING that is growing up and taking shape.  Take a look!

Laptop Friendly photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/81374383@N00/521630871
Technorati Tags: FIEI, Friday Institute of Educational Innovations, 1:1, Unfiltered Access, Ubiquitious Access

I’ve been saving this bookmark in my computer for quite a while.  Sean Nash from the blog “Nashworld” wrote July about the “Four Pillars of Technology Integration.” and has created a very nice graphic to go along with the post (noting there that he spent too much time on the graphic).  I on the other hand will use it here (to the left) with FULL attribution!  Thanks Sean! Please check out the post!

What I want to write about today though is his initial insights into technological transformation. We worked through some training with our teachers over the past two weeks focusing on what we tried to represent as Challenge Based Learning to our teaching community.  The idea, sprouting from input from Apple Distinguished Educators who are part of our teaching staff, grew into a two day experience for all teachers in the classrooms which will be part of our 1:1 laptop implementation this year.  All in all, the workshops are going well, and have show to have teachers experience what I expected.   Some teachers to be struggled with technology. Some teachers found initial, early and dynamic success. Some teachers rebelled against the idea of the computers taking over their classrooms (and thus their lives). Other embraced the ideas shared and discussed and will be successful right away.  I also continue to believe that success will find us in our classrooms around this program due to our classroom teacher’s drive to use all the tools that are in their reach and the students love of the digital environment that they live in right now.  I believe our school has made some strong, agressive and noteworthy steps to get from what Mr. Nash states as “behind the curve” of technological transformation and instead get out in front of the crowd to distinguish our program from those that have come before us.

What initally connected to me in his post has nothing to do with the specifics of the Four Pillars of Technology integration, but instead it was his statement about the filters one applies as we consider as we retool schools along the lines of technological transformation.  Sean states:

If there is no way to see any of the individual trees in a forest, you are likely going to be forced to start your mission with a whole-forest view to begin with.  This is not a bad thing.

He then outlines two important thoughts:

1) You don’t need a flashlight.  It’s not that dark in there anymore.  Trust that there are others who have proceeded down this path before you, and they have learned many important lessons.  Collaborate.  Learn from their successes and failures.  Do not go it alone.  Resist the temptation to slap a digital device in the hands of each student and call it success.  Have a plan.

2) Rarely do we get to make decisions with the clarity that a little distance provides.  Take your time (but hurry).  Ask yourself: what can we do with these new tools available today that we couldn’t do before?  If we could remake our curriculum any way we wanted, how would we do it?  Think transformation of the way teaching and learning is done in your district, as opposed to integration into it as it exists.

This is just the message I wanted to have the teachers EXPERIENCE in the workshops we have been providing. That’s right… EXPERIENCE.  If we spend time taling at the issue (which we also did a very, very small amount of in the two days together), we miss our own point.  Frankly, I am a strong believer in the common sense approach that says that you can tell people things like this over and over, but as I learned in “Influencer” if you show and demonstrate, rather than tell will garner fuller more expansive results in our efforts.

Thus our results show (after reviewing the progress and the exit survey results) that we did a decent job of addressing the following goals:

1. To provide teachers with the opportunity to become more aware of the power of the laptop computers the students will have full access to through this program.
2. To provide teachers an opportunity to engage in a collaborative and collegial learning experience in the same way the students may engage in our classrooms.
3. To provide the teachers in the 1:1 classrooms time to examine the challenges of classroom management in a technology rich environment and develop thoughtful strategies on how to address these concerns.
4. To provide teachers an understanding of the logistical processes involved in getting technical help, additional resources and integration support at Shanghai American School.

Did we feel like we needed to give out teachers a flashlight like Sean mentions?  No, we did not.  Some, admittedly stumbled around in the dark a bit, but for the most part we met the needs of the groups (which were large and diverse).  We encouraged teachers to “Collaborate.” Some– no most– “Learn(ed) from their successes and failures. Teachers in our school learned that they “Do not (have to)go it alone”. No, we did not “slap a digital device in the hands of each student and call it success.”

Thanks Sean for the inspirational post that helped my reflections. I will reflect more on the remaining part of the post later.

I have written before about my belief that staff development needs to be addressed as a long term effort, and not something that can be taken on as a short term effort to solve a particular problem.

Let’s face facts!  Common Sense tells us that to really learn to do something well, guided practice with a trained expert will result in success far more times than a single “sit and get” lecture of a visit to our local or regional conference. It is how our BRAINS work!

Sure, there are exceptions out there, but teachers who do apply knowledge garnered at a single sit down session are either 1) unusual, 2) probably educational risk takers or 3) a little bit nuts.  Perhaps some of us are a combo of the three, but I won’t write about that today!

Today when I opened my email, I found the digital version of ISTE’s Learning and Leading magazine. In it is an article called “Getting to the Heart of Technology Integration and focuses on the Instructional Technology Resource Teacher Program in the State of Virginia. The article is written by Teresa Coffman, associate professor at the University of Mary Washington.  From what I read of Professor Coffman’s writings, these folks are close to getting it right.  The State Department of Education in Virginia mandates that the 134 school districts in the state employ tech teams built around two key positions.

Those positions are:

1. An ITRT, who is responsible for training teachers to use technoloyg and software effectively, as well as helping teachers integrate that technology into their curricula.
2. A technology support staff persons who is responsible for managing the school’s information network.

From what I read, in the Virginia model the program relies on the collaboration of the classroom teacher and the ITRT.  Wow! The state is mandating that the ITRT and the classroom teachers communicate and strategize the implementation of the technology tools and provide direct support in the classroom environment.

The ITRT staffer has a wide vareity of responsibilities, but some include:

• Modeling instructional strategies for teachers
• Providing direct training and professional development
• Researching technology-based instructional strategies
• Evaluating software and hardware
• Meeting with administrators and content supervisors at the school or district level to coordinate services
• Serve on building and district leadership teams
• Creating and implementing a plan for communication on progress and activities to school faculty and admininstration.
• Maintaining records where and when appropriate to document progress

So… What’s Missing?
Where is the administrator support?  Why is it that the administrators are left off the list? Why does the state not recognize the importance of administrative leadership in the implementation of technology. Nothing will do more to raise the bar at a school level than to hold the administrators responsible for (at the minimum) the NETS-A.  To be fair accountability applied to any member of our learning communities without support of those members, is like taxation without representation.

Let’s just simply add one bullet point:

• Provide direct training, support and professional development to building and district level administration on the building of their digital leadership skills which focuses on the use of technology tools for administrative work and on the evaluation of the use of technology in the classroom programs.

I think that without that step, the $500 million dollars dedicated to this effort will fall well short of the effectiveness that the designers have hoped for in the long term.  The implementation of this program is merely focused on and dependent upon the ITRT position.  The good news here is that Virginia has at least recognized this as a key component.

The article states that:

Of the recommendations that researchers made for the ITRT program’s continued success, perhaps the most compelling was the idea that administrators should become more involved in the program so that they can recognize effective technology use and support their teachers’ integration efforts.

The author goes on to state that:

A Technology Resource Teacher Coaching Academy…. echoed this sentiment. It found variable levels of administrative involvement in the county. Some ITRTs indicated that their administrators provide ample support adn encouragement, and this was both necessary and beneficial.

Necessary and beneficial- yes, I could not agree more. It is in many ways like the air we breath.  It is not only necessary but also beneficial.  Without administrative support, technology integration efforts, no matter how well financed and resourced will struggle and suffer.

An analysis of the program (written in 2007) can be found at this link: http://www.doe.virginia.gov/VDOE/Technology/OET/info_brief_itrt.pdf

Leading and Learning, ISTE, ITRT, Technology Integration Specialists, Administration, Digital Leadership

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I just read this on Leadertalk:

Using Flip Camera for Teacher Evaluations

The Flip
camera seems to be just about everywhere these days. The Flip makes it very easy to record and share video with other users, a fact which has not been overlooked by our hardworking teachers in the field. But, I feel that we should not overlook the potential of the flip in helping leaders help make us better teachers. Having conducted many an observation, and having many more conducted upon me, I know how difficult it is to visualize where my teaching could improve. The Fliphas the potential to make to make visualizations unecessary. The video does not lie, and at almost no effort to the administrator or the teacher involved in the process, a lesson could be recorded and jointly reviewed either in person or online. I have been using the Flip for some time to provide videos of my lectures to students who missed one of my college courses when it first occurred to me that the Flip has the potential to revolutionize evaluations and shadowing as we currently do them. Obviously, there has been the technology to do this for some time, but the equipment and methods were often bulky and complex. The Flip makes the process as simple as click, record, upload, and view. I have no doubt that this ability will revolutionize the way we do observations. I also have little doubt that its use will be subject of much ethics debate, however I am hopeful that the little camera that can will help us become better teachers if our leaders will use it properly.

Regards,

Jason Hancock

www.drhancock.net

Hmm…. interesting idea. It connects me with a personal experience…..

When I was teaching, one my supervisors demanded we video tape one lesson, watch it and write a reflection. I don’t remember what the lesson was I taught nor the outcome, but I do remember hearing her cackle with glee in reading my reflection which started out….

“I was struck by what I saw.  An extremely handsome teacher who obviously should be walking the catwalks of Paris and New York rather than teaching 4th grade in Beaverton, Oregon.”

I am not sure what she found amusing about that.

Flip camera image via flickrstorm @ http://static.flickr.com/2099/2437471860_8f6cc8e28c.jpg

flip camera, teacher evaluations

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This entry will be cross posted to the Leadertalk Blog

My colleagues and I got in an animated conversation the other day about the actual demonstrable skills teachers and administrators must have to be successful members of our school community.  Beyond the basics understandings that teachers must have of the new uses of the read/write web, what exactly do we expect our educational professionals to be able to use to enhance teaching and build better learners?

I’ve been pounding my fist of late in these meetings, demanding a well developed professional development plan that is clear, concise and has reasonable accountability build into it- with a sharp eye on the short term and a vision for what will be in year 2 and year 3 of the plan.  I personally feel it seems like a reasonable and common sense request, and as I have said over and over, I could probably sit down and write a draft myself, but that would not help us address what really needs to drive our school’s technology training strategy.  Then…out of the blue… it came out of one of the participants mouth. Their words (paraphrased and combined) were:

When are the school administration going to start holding teachers accountable and make them use technology and follow the technology plan?  We have NETS for Teachers in our performance evaluation program. We are working hard to ensure that training is in place for our teachers, but it will all be a huge waste of time if teachers are not held accountable.

Interesting thoughts indeed!  I didn’t say it but I wanted to hold someone else accountable.  Nonetheless, the conversation continued and what followed was a significant discussion about the frustrations of the technology specialists.  These folks are working long hours to prepare lessons for their peers in addition to preparing lessons for the students.  As we are all aware, adults are a lot more demanding than children and thus the time investment has been significant.  A typical PD session that is voluntary results in just a few “interested” teachers showing up, and the technology use being enhanced in classrooms where there is already integration already going on.  It is certainly not a loss, but it is not the gain we’re hoping for either.

So the question held in the air around us and we all were responsible for the answer.  Ultimately, we are talking about professional responsiblity and instructional excellence.  Ultimately, I feel it comes to making the standards and embedded skills in the standards managable and understandable for all members of the instructional community in a school.  One of the resources we are using to build from is a resource called “23 Things”. This group of educators has put together a great list of resources and concepts that they feel best addresses the current needs of a practicing teacher in a classroom. We took that list, analyzed it, and then added to it and adapted it in ways that will best meet our needs at our school.  What I think the 23 things and our additions and modifications does in this Professional Development Mashup is make the whole mess of what would seem to be disjointed applications, resources and skills into chunks of possibilities.  I would share it here, but it is not quite done. When it is, I will do so. But, the creation and formation of this structure does not answer the key question posed.  Are the administrators going to hold the teachers accountable?  If they are, do they have the will- the guts – the understanding of the technology to say “You must meet these standards or go find another school or another job?”

It is a tough call.  In 2000 the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations published a report called School Technology Leadership: Incidence and Impact.  In the report it states:

For technology to become an integral part of a school, it not only is necessary to help teachers use the technology but administrators must be involved in it, too. The importance of training for developing teachers in technology has long been recognized in the educational community. These findings indicate that administrative leadership and decision-making are equal, if not more important than spending on infrastructure to maintaining a successful technology program.

…Charismatic people may contribute to technology integration as well, but it is even more essential for a school to distribute leadership and become a “technology learning organization,” where administrators, teachers, students, and parents together work on how best to adapt new technologies to improve learning. (p. 17)

(Thank you Drape’s Takes for drawing my attention to this quote!)

After it is all said and done, I have to continue to believe that until we hold the ADMINISTRATORS accountable for understanding technology and exploiting the power of the web, we cannot and will not be able to hold our instructional staff accountable.  As was stated almost 9 years ago, it is the leaders who must build a “technology learning organization”.

What do you think?

Posted by Andrew Torris

——————————————————–

Reference:

• Anderson, R. & Dexter, S. (December 1, 2000). School Technology Leadership: Incidence and Impact. Center for research on information technology and organizations. I.T. in education, paper 98. Retrieved December 26, 2008 from
  http://repositories.cdlib.org/crito/education/98

Related articles…

• The Role of Leadership in Technology Integration
• Teachers that are Difference Makers
• Hacking the Curriculum
• Text Messaging Tips for Parents & Educators

I don’t often write about the technology work that is going on in my school as it feels a bit inappropriate to me to do so here, but I could not resist it this time. Amanda DeCardy, my wife is a technology integration specialist and the 8th grade team at her school just completed a wonderful integrated unit called “Heritage Project”.

Amanda writes on her school blog “From the Outside Looking in…” that

Over and over again, students made connections that ran deep into their heritage.  They were insightful young adults and definitely are making their first steps towards becoming high school students.  It always seems to happen around January and this project is proof of their growth throughout this unit of study.

This video struck me as such a wonderful integration of reading, writing, listening, speaking, research, as well as recognizing the human component that makes such a project so engaging for early adolescents.  Congratulations to this team and please go and check out this school’s blogs! They are doing great things!

I dream of the day when kids have full access to network services an usable computers to make this type of creativity available!

Heritage Project, Outside Looking In…, Amanda DeCardy, SAS, Shanghai American School, Pudong Middle School

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